Introduction to AR
Contents
What is AR?
AR was originally developed in the early 90s but the recent advances in technology and proliferation of smart phone have made its use more viable. Early uses of AR were in marketing and advertising but it is increasingly being used in other areas, including education.
On a technical level, there are broadly two categories: Marker-based, and markerless systems.
Marker-based systems or natural feature tracking use physical-world symbols and act as a reference point for computer graphics to be overlaid. So I could take a 2-dimensional printed marker, point my mobile phone at the marker and my phone would interpret this symbol to overlay an on-screen graphic as if it were directly on top of the marker in the physical world.
An alternative approach is use of markerless systems which use location data or GPS to determine the position in the physical world. The location data can them be compared to a database to determine what the device is looking at, and influence what will be displayed on-screen.
Examples
Education
Although Augmented Reality has been evangelized for years, there have only been a handful of examples for educational purposes, such as the British Museums’ Ancient Egyptian trail or The Augsburg Display Cabinet AR experience at the John Paul Getty Museum.
Recently, the National Geographic Channel have used an installation to promote educational documentaries on natural history. In a similar way AR was used to showcase interactive elements in the Belgrade Science Festival. The installation consisted of a giant book in which usual school subjects such as history, geography or science were presented with an AR twist.
Marketing
Advertising
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=rFuUFeQIdpk
Retail
Industry
AR firm Metaio has designed a proof of concept demo showing users how to change a printer toner using 3D recognition.
Volkswagen have developed an instructional AR implementation to guide their mechanics when doing vehicle services.
Related blog posts
SCARLET Audio Presentation A short audio presentation, produced for the JISC event: ONLINE: Innovating e-Learning 2011 Online Conference (Nov 2011). This video provides a good introduction to SCARLET.
SCARLET Evaluation Nine students at the University of Manchester were selected to research a Dante book from the University’s Special Collections for their first course essay. At the same time they were able to access SCARLET content via iPads in the reading room of the library. This was our first opportunity to discover their thoughts on using SCARLET to support their research.
Demonstration du projet SCARLET French demonstration of SCARLET.
Thoughts on the ELI Conference The conference (Feb 2012) was a fascinating opportunity to see the innovative developments that are taking place in Teaching and Learning in North America, particularly within the mobile arena.
Rise of the Portable Machines A growing number of consumers are turning away from what they perceive to be a restrictive desktop environment in a bid to be connected 24/7.
Demonstration Content Try out SCARLET for yourself!
Bringing Ancient Greek Papyri to Life through AR SCARLET technologies and resources are designed to improve your observation abilities. This blog post includes a video looking at using the most famous piece of the Rylands collection, the world-renowned oldest fragment of the Gospel of John, as an example. The fragment is an ideal starting point not only because of its importance, but also because it is on permanent public display. See how using AR brings this to life not only with students, but also with the wider audience.
In this video you will have an introduction to the story of the fragment, its content and format, and why it is so important in the history of Christianity on the one hand, and the history of the book on the other hand.
Demystifying the SCARLET app Workflow Guyda Armstrong explains the core materials (Editions) used on her course – Beyond the Text: The Book and its Body and how using Augmented Reality will connect students to supplemental resources and commentaries.
The Benefits of Using Augmented Reality in Education The SCARLET project, while embracing the potential of AR, hopes to concentrate on delivering the benefits to student learning without being a flag bearer for the technology.
What SCARLET Means to Me Through SCARLET, researchers are introduced to primary source materials. These are researchers, who possibly wouldn’t have used them ordinarily. It could mean that as they are shown the value of primary source materials for their study, that they are more likely to visit an archive at a later date.
Team SCARLET, in the Library with Augmented Reality
Team SCARLET (as we like to be known) got to see some original manuscripts and early printed editions that this project aims to merge (using Augmented Reality) with the abundance of digital assets that the University of Manchester are so fortunate to have access to.
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